Hands on: Troubleshooting motherboards

Nas nightmare
A prime example came when preparing a DIY network-attached storage (Nas) project. While the Nas installation was assembled and running within half an hour, it followed a day of utter frustration with a previous configuration.

My first attempt used components virtually identical to the successful configuration but yielded no success.

I had originally started with an old Via Epia M9000 board which, coupled with a spare 80GB IDE disk and 256MB Crucial Dimm, seemed an ideal platform.

Drawn by the convenience of booting from a USB key, I opted for that first, but while Naslite 2 USB happily booted from a CD, found the key and wrote the required files to it, I couldn’t persuade the Epia board to boot from it.

There were several USB options in the boot menu in the Bios, but none made any difference. Maybe it was my Bios version or the USB key in question, but either way, it was a no-go.

My second attempt involved the CD version of Naslite 2, which boots each time from a CD and applies any configuration changes with a floppy disk.

The installation went smoothly up to the point where you need to connect to the Nas using a web browser from another system to retrieve the unlock code.

While the Nas accepted external Telnet requests for configuration, it wasn’t providing HTTP services, in spite of them appearing to be operational from the point of view of the Nas, so we got no web access or unlock code.

I contacted Naslite’s developers via the live chat facility on the Server Elements site and they patiently trouble-shot the system, eliminating all variables until, after about four hours, we were all stumped.

It was particularly odd since Via Epias are a popular choice for running Naslite and Server Elements even had its own M9000 installation running fine.